=Javanese Practice.=—Detailed information about the history, technique, and designs of the Javanese process has been set down in a monumental work: “Die Batikkunst in Niederlandisch Indien,” published in Harlem under the auspices of the Dutch Government in 1899. Perhaps of more interest to the non-scientific reader is a short but well-written account of “Battack Printing in Java,” read before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1906 by an English chemist, John Allan, who spent several months among the natives, studying the process at first-hand. According to these authorities the Javanese and, indeed, most of the natives of Malaysia, wear garments simple enough in style and cut, but elaborately decorated with great variety of both color and design. The principal garment, common to both men and women, is the _sarong_, in shape not unlike a large and elongated bath towel, which, according to the desire and sex of the owner, may be made to serve as trousers or skirt, overcoat or blanket, and is the universal bathing costume. It is made of calico, rarely homespun, almost always imported from Lancashire or Holland, and as the natives, both men and women, are exceedingly fond of bathing, the colors must be fast enough to stand constant exposure to water as well as to the fierce tropical sun. They also wear head-dresses made from squares of calico, dyed with square centres of plain color and elaborately decorated at the sides; and _slendangs_, a kind of girdle or shawl, usually made of silk and less elaborately decorated. The costume is completed, for full-dress occasions, by a thin shirt or chemise and a light jacket. For producing the designs on the sarongs, the process of wax resist is almost always employed by the natives. Unfortunately of late years the Javanese market has been flooded with an immense quantity of cheap and, generally, neatly printed goods made in Manchester and in Holland in rough imitation of the native styles. So it is not an easy matter, nowadays, even in Java, to get genuine specimens of Batik work. These can always be recognized, however, on careful examination by the peculiar and characteristic odor and “feel” of the wax left behind in the cloth, and, better, by the fine irregular “crackle” formed in the dye-pot.